Marin commute nightmare: 'I escaped death'

Anthony Contini of Tamalpais Valley says he's lucky to be alive after a 100-foot eucalyptus tree toppled from a Sausalito hillside and smashed into his Honda Fit as he was on the way to pick up his granddaughter Thursday morning.

The big tree fell across three southbound lanes of Highway 101 near the Spencer Avenue exit at 7:24 a.m., triggering a six-mile traffic jam until it was cut and debris cleared nearly an hour later.

The 70-year-old Contini, former owner of Giorgio's Pizzeria in San Francisco, emerged from the freeway nightmare without a scratch, although he was still a bit shaky hours later.

"I hear this snap ... a big cracking noise," Contini said. "I see this huge tree coming down on me." The car spun around, careening out of control, until it stopped facing the wrong way on the right shoulder.

Contini was numb and trembling in shock but otherwise unscathed. Oncoming cars screeched to a halt before colliding with the tree, its limbs and other debris littering the freeway.

"I escaped death is what happened," Contini said. "I'm lucky to be alive."

That's the way Ellyn McCaffrey of San Anselmo feels as well, after emerging with just a small cut on her hand after a branch hit the windshield and hood of her Toyota Camry as she was driving in a nearby lane a few car lengths ahead of Contini.

McCaffrey was on her way to work in the controller's office at the University of California at San Francisco when the limb struck. "I didn't see it coming," she said, adding that her biggest worry after it hit was smashing into another car, because she couldn't see through the broken windshield.

Traffic came to a standstill, then merged into the single southbound lane that remained open, as emergency crews arrived and determined that no one required medical attention.

Southern Marin Fire Capt. Charlie Casalnuovo, who noted the traffic jam that quickly developed made it difficult for emergency vehicles to get there, said crews armed with chainsaws cut up the big tree and moved debris to the side of the road.

"Due to the size of the tree, a tow truck was unable to drag it out of the lanes and onto the right shoulder," reported California Highway Patrol spokesman Andrew Barclay, who added that the falling tree damaged a Caltrans electronic road sign.

Motorists in passing vehicles gawked as a slow procession of commuters squeezed into one lane to pass the spectacle.

"The front end of the car was smashed in," said Ken Shuman of San Rafael of Contini's car. Shuman, who was on a Golden Gate Transit bus en route to his job in San Francisco as a vice president of the housing website Trulia.com, added, "It was pretty bad."

Shuman said five or six motorists pulled over to help, and his bus, arriving just after the tree fell, was able to make it past the debris.

By 8 a.m., a bumper-to-bumper traffic jam stretched back to Corte Madera, but all lanes were reopened at about 8:15 a.m.

Caltrans officials were alerted to check out the hillside — and cut up the big tree trunk that remains out of the way on the freeway shoulder.

This was the third incident in the past four months in which debris crashed down the hillside along southbound Highway 101 in Sausalito. On March 22, rocks toppled down near the Alexander Avenue exit, triggering collisions that injured one motorist. On June 4, another rockslide closed three lanes of the southbound freeway just north of Spencer Avenue.

Marin Supervisor Kate Sears, who represents Southern Marin, would like to see Caltrans look more closely at the problematic hillside.

"It's a good idea to check in with Caltrans," Sears said. "Has something changed on the hillside? There have been a lot of events. It's a good idea to have the conversation."

Caltrans sent an arborist to the site after the tree fell and determined it was an isolated incident.

"There isn't anything out of the ordinary," said Steve Williams, a Caltrans spokesman. "There is no need to hit the panic button yet. We do periodic inspections along that hillside."